


The Earthling

by transmarkwatney (felilivargas)



Category: The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Diary/Journal, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-23 05:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11396544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felilivargas/pseuds/transmarkwatney
Summary: Mark comes back to Earth and ends up suffering from a couple serious mental disorders after having to deal with Mars. His therapist recommends he keep a journal, similar to how he kept logs on Mars. Lots of daily life anecdotes and Mark joking around, but still a somewhat serious theme under the surface.





	1. Chapter 1

Day 1  
9:38 PM

So… Day 1? I guess?

My therapist told me that I should try writing journals, the way I wrote logs back on Mars. He said it would help me keep track of things and maybe help with my new fun memory loss issues. So I guess it's worth a try.

Let's see… What have I done today?

Not much.

I went to therapy in the morning. The mental one, not the PT. I don't have that on Tuesdays, that's on Wednesdays and Fridays, mainly, and every other Monday. After I was done with that, I went grocery shopping. I got eggs, bread, some vegetables, a small watermelon since they're in season I guess, some chicken for dinner, and some more Maruchan ramen, since they're cheap and fast and easy to make while dissociating, but you can still add veggies and eggs to them so you don't feel like you're living off dorm food, even though you basically are. I wasn't hungry at lunchtime, but my reminder went off to eat, so I ate a couple of slices of bread. Then I felt bad about it all afternoon, because I thought it was a waste, since I wasn't hungry. But I forced myself to eat a whole meal for dinner. Said whole meal was made of burnt, dry chicken, drenched in butter so I wouldn't have to deal with how dry it is. Then I worked on a class plan for a lecture I'm giving at a high school next week.

And now I'm here.

I guess that's why I'm feeling sick. All I've had today is bread and butter with a side of burnt chicken. (Unless you count the single granola bar I had for breakfast.)

So yeah.

I'm not doing too hot lately.

You see, about a month after I got back to Earth, my PTs got really concerned because I was reporting feelings of numbness, but it wasn't really anything they could handle, or even that I could articulate. So they referred me to a therapist, who referred me to another therapist, who referred me to a diagnostician. It turns out, feeling completely numb after going through hell and back isn't exactly uncommon, and they've got a word for it: Dissociative PTSD. But they diagnosed me with C-PTSD and DPDR. (Don't ask me why. I've never got psych people.) The C in C-PTSD stands for Complex, and it means the trauma that I'm currently post-stressing about happened over a long period of time. The DPDR means I feel disconnected from my body all the time.

Woohoo! I'm fucked up in the head AND in my bones!!

So now in addition to my PTs and sports doctors, I'm seeing a mental therapist to help me with those disorders. And it turned out to be a good foresight, because things have only gotten worse.

Something dissociation does is it causes memory loss and inability to track time. So I've just slowly been deteriorating, honestly. I feel like I can't remember anything. I'll just be sitting somewhere, and next thing I know, it's an hour later and I have to leave. It's really honestly pretty terrifying.

And then it gets worse.

Me and the rest of the crew met up a week ago at a bar to socialize and talk about things somewhere where the media couldn't reach us. It started out pretty great, actually. But then, for some reason, being around all the loud noise and people got overwhelming for me. I tried to hide it, but I guess I wasn't doing a good job, because they noticed. (I guess when I shut up for two seconds, people can tell something's wrong.) I tried to downplay it, but I didn't do a good job of it, and they ended up leaving the bar with me.

While we were outside, Beck tried to ask me what was wrong, being a doctor and all. He asked me a lot of questions, the only one I can remember being how much I'd drunk, but I don't think he got anywhere with them. He was really worried. I think eventually I managed to communicate that the crowd had made it worse, and we ended up walking to a nearby trendy coffee shop which was open until midnight.

They sold booze, I think, and I remember Martinez buying himself a beer to make up for leaving the bar, and offering me one. I turned him down. The coffee shop was very nice, but they had loud music, and it wasn't very enjoyable for me. I just felt bad, I think. I knew I was pulling everybody down, but I couldn't stop feeling the way I did. Everything felt blurry.

At some point, someone handed me a hot chocolate. I looked up, and it was Lewis. I nodded and told her thanks, and drank it the rest of the evening in silence. I couldn't bring myself to talk to anyone. Not when I was like this.

I just… I don't know what happened. I used to be the person pulling everyone's moods up, not down. But I also used to want to go to space.

That's the other thing, too… I feel a lot of times like I'm still on Mars. I'll open the door and there won't be an airlock there and I'll have a moment of panic before realizing the air isn't rushing outside because I'm on Earth. I'll close my eyes and see Acidalia Planitia there instead of the street I'm on. When I'm driving, I forget I can accelerate faster than the rovers I had on Mars, and I'll be scared to get on the freeway. A lot of times, I can tell myself it's not true, but it's still scary.

I think I'm going crazy.

I don't think, in my whole life, I've ever had to live knowing I can't trust my own mind. I've lived knowing of my own limitations, of course, I mean how could I not? I lived on Mars. If there's an epitome of testing your own limitations, it's living on Mars. But I've never felt like my thoughts, my feelings, my sense of where I am and how much time has passed, are lies.

I guess that's why I'm starting this journal, though. I want to learn to trust myself again. And maybe if I have some sort of log of what I've done, written by me, I'll gain my own trust again.

Because that's something I have to struggle with now.

When did my life turn into this?

How is it that I can survive for a year and a half on Mars, but I can barely handle looking at my own reflection anymore because my brain doesn't want me to believe that's what I look like? How did I go from farming potatoes out of dead rusty soil and my own shit to not being able to look at a potato without dissociating so bad I feel like a ghost? How did I go from being desparate to stay alive to being incapable of feeling alive, no matter what I do?

Gah. That's enough thinking for tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 2**  
[10:41 AM]

Ate breakfast. You will never guess what it was.

I'll give you the Dissociation Breakfast menu:

1\. Raw, untoasted bread  
2\. Two entire slices of raw, untoasted bread  
3\. The same thing, but with a slice of cheese/jam/peanut butter inside. Bone app the teeth.  
4\. Maruchan ramen, with TWO eggs. (Only for less dissociatey days, in which I can tell I'm hungry enough to eat it.)  
5\. Approximately three bites of the above, because I'm dissociating too much to tell that I'm hungry.  
6\. Nothing, because I forget to eat.  
7\. A banana

Can you guess which it was this morning?

If you guessed a #2 with a side of milk I realized had gone sour the moment I started drinking it, you're CORRECT!

I actually took 3 slices of bread. I was really hungry from yesterday. It took me 20 minutes to eat, though, because I decided I was going to respond to emails while I was eating, so I kept forgetting to eat.

Good news, bad news, though. The good news is that my really intense mental illness hasn't completely destroyed my professional life yet. I've still got talks lined up in a couple of weeks at a few universities in California, one of which being literal Stanford. The lecture, as it turns out, is nearby, at a place called Carlmont High School. Which means I get to spend a week vacationing in California! I mean, they're nowhere near the beach, but that's still kind of rad! I'll be flying out next Tuesday, so in just over a week.

The bad news is that I looked at the weather, and it looks like there's going to be a heat wave for the next week here in Oregon. That's bad for a lot of reasons. The first is that heat makes me dissociate more, because it makes me tired, which never helps dissociation. The second, and this is the really bad news: I tried to turn on my A/C, but it just blew out hot air. I called up the front desk of my apartment complex, and it looks like it's out for the whole building.

DAMMIT.

Also, everyone else I live near keeps texting me jokes about how a walk on Mars would sound really nice right about now since we're in 95 degree weather in 83% humidity, and the temperature keeps rising. Listen. I get it. Mars sounds nice to people who haven't been stuck there with little hope of return. Because of the temperature. Ha ha. Very funny. Points for originality.

Though I gotta say... at least on Mars, I had clearance to fix my own damn temperature regulation technology. 

Enough for now, though. I have to leave the apartment. It's already getting stuffy and hot and I don't want to be in here when the temperature matches outside.

[8:47 PM]

Today wasn't all that bad!

I went out for lunch, because it was hot and I wanted to be inside somewhere. I ended up going to a cafe and working on the lesson plan for Carlmont for a few hours. I have to somehow fit the entire thing within a time block of about an hour and a half, and I'll be presenting it over the course of two days. Oh, the wonders of high school block schedules.

After that, I went to PT. It wasn't actually that horrible today. I mean, I still got talked to about how I need to be more careful to do my exercises every day, but it's honestly still a little better than it was. I mean. It was better before my DPDR got so bad that I couldn't always stand long enough to do the exercises. But at least now we know that the DPDR is what's stopping me some of the time, so they can come up with strategies to deal with it. Also, I didn't have to do that much exercise there today for whatever reason, which is good, because sometimes the soreness makes me dissociate later. (But sometimes it helps me ground? It's not very predictable.) “That much” meaning “I didn't feel exhausted afterwards.” So maybe I'm just getting stronger? They just said I'm on track with how they're expecting me to develop. Which is good, I guess.

Since I wasn't that tired, I went out and got myself a new air conditioner after PT. It was a little pricey, but it'll have to do. It's one of those window units that you install and plug in and you don't have to hook up to anything else. I even checked with the apartment regulations, and I'm good to go.

When I got home, I spent most of the night putting it in. I turned it on and everything, and it works! I realized about half an hour ago that I hadn't eaten, so I made myself some pasta that I'm eating right now. I wasn't dissociating as much, so I managed to make myself an okay sauce, too. I even cleaned out some vegetables I've had for a while that had been on the verge of going bad.

Little mundane successes! Yay, I ate!

I have to say, keeping this journal is a lot less exciting than my logs on Mars. I guess that's good, because somehow Mars was so awful I got traumatized from it. But there isn't as much to talk about, so I feel almost obligated to backfill it with random stuff I'm thinking about.

Pop music has taken a really weird turn lately. It's starting to sound a little more like 70's music. I never thought I'd honestly say I miss pop music from when I was in high school—I mean, I never thought I'd have a very strong opinion about it—but man, what I would do for pop music trying to emulate anything but the 1970s.

I feel kind of bad about it, mostly because of how Lewis would feel if she ever found out, but honestly, I think all 70s music has become kind of an auditory trigger for me.

Okay, maybe not all. A decent chunk of it is okay. I would rather not listen to it, and I'll turn the radio onto any other station when I hear it, but I don't dissociate too badly when I hear it. But occasionally, I'll hear one of the songs I listened to on Mars, and I'll feel a little like I'm back on Mars again.

It's kind of strange, though, because I don't feel exactly like I'm back on Mars. I don't get like, a really vivid flashback the way they do in movies, or a sudden sense that I'm actually there. I just… feel emotionally the same way I did back then. And I feel strongly enough that I am back on Mars that I look at the world around me, and I see Earth, and I just… I get disoriented. And then I dissociate, usually enough that I feel numb again.

It happened to me earlier while I was driving to the appliance store. I don't know what radio station I was on—I think I'd been tuning it out—but Dancing Queen by Abba came on. I know, it's a silly song to associate with being left alone on a desolate planet, but I listened to that album while I was driving to the Schiaparelli crater. And suddenly, I was totally disoriented. I kept seeing the freeway in front of me and panicking because I felt like I should have been able to see Phobos at this time of day, which was… about 2pm, on Earth, months after my return from Mars. I eventually had to pull over, change the station, and mentally recover until I felt like I could focus on the road again.

I'll admit it. It was unnerving. It's especially unnerving in retrospect, because I think at the time, I was dissociating so bad, I didn't realize what a danger I posed being on the road while having a Complex Post-Mars Stress Breakdown.

Now that I think about it, that's a good thing to want to work on. I think I'll try a little harder to find stations that won't play either 70's music or 70's imitation music. Maybe I'll make myself a playlist?

I'm gonna make myself a playlist for the car.

[9:25]

Wow. I just spent all that time making a playlist.

In my defense, I don't usually listen to music that I have saved on my computer. I listen to music with things like Spotify, Youtube, Playmoss, and radio/Sirius. (I wonder how the inventors of SiriusXM feel about me calling my rover “missions” Sirius? NASA published all my old logs, so it isn't really a secret anymore. I bet they got a kick out of that.) So I had to download all the music I used. Mostly illegally.

I put it on a USB stick. That way I don't have to waste phone space, and also I can leave it in the car.

I've decided I'm going to back up my journal on Google Drive. That way, I'll be able to write about my boring life anywhere I want.

As of now, I'm gonna work on the college lectures and then probably get to bed.

Goodnight, dear diary or whatever. See you whenever.

 **Day 5**  
[12:10 PM]

Had cheese toast for breakfast. 

Got up, the air conditioner hadn't malfunctioned or anything. I guess that's what it's supposed to do.

...God, it's easy for me to feel numb sometimes.

I've been in my apartment all day. Working on this, doing that. Did some of my PT exercises. Finished the high school plan. Started revising my lecture for Stanford, which is basically the same lecture I've given everywhere, but I'm addressing Stanford this time instead of every other lecture hall I've spoken in.

It doesn't feel real.

As I'm writing this, it feels a little like my hands are flickering in and out of existence. I can see hands in front of me, but they don't feel like mine. It feels like just a minute ago, they were so frail, so weak, from malnutrition. I can feel it in my blood, the more I think about it. The sheer lack of nutrients. The heaviness, even on Mars. Even though my hands look healthy… They can't be mine… I feel like the starvation never really left my body.

I don't know how I got home, honestly.

I should have died.

When I get in these sorts of moods, I start thinking about all the effort that went into saving me. The Chinese satellite that still hasn't been launched, because they sent food to save me. The rocket that exploded that was supposed to have food for me, and all the millions of dollars that sent down the drain. The rest of my crew, who took nearly two years out of their lives to come save me. And their children, some of whom couldn't even remember seeing their parents before by the time they got home, because their mom or dad had left when they were just a baby. The fucking pathfinder team that gathered to help communicate with me. All the scientists, at JPL and in Houston and everywhere, all coming together… to keep me alive.

It all feels like too much.

People all over the world were rooting for me… I just can't comprehend it. I can't. 

I'm staring at my hands right now. They're still pretty frail. Not as frail as I keep thinking they'll be, because I feel like I only just left Mars right now, but they're still not quite healthy. Mostly, though, they're human.

That's all I am. Human.

I'm one man. I'm Mark Watney. Remember when my name was only my name, and not representative of something greater than me, something powerful enough to unite people from all over the world in hope and empathy?

I miss just being a human. I feel like I'm a shell of it now. It's like the world (and my brain) can't decide if I'm more or less of a human now, so they just compromised by making me nothing. Literally, not figuratively, nothing. A blank space where a person used to be.

My reminder just went off to eat something, but I'm dissociating too much to move.

I'll get it in a moment.

[8:19 PM]

So it eventually dawned on me that the reason I was dissociating so badly was because I hadn't left my apartment all morning. Figures.

After I finished a decent chunk of the revision for the lecture, I forced myself to get up and eat something. That was about… Uhh, 2pmish. Ish. It may have been more like 1:30. Either way, not really officially lunchtime. I feel like my PT would be upset with me. But at least I ate a decent amount!

Okay, by “a decent amount” I mean “I actually ate until I felt full.” I felt full after a banana and a slice of bread.

I was dissociating really badly, okay?

Anyways, after that I threw myself out of my apartment and went for a walk in the park. Which would have been really nice, except that it was as hot as Satan's firey asshole outside. After a few minutes, I could already feel myself start to burn. So I ended up going to this new other trendy cafe that opened up a few blocks from my apartment.

They reminded me a lot of growing up in the 2010s, when as a high schooler people would gather to go get boba while they studied for their finals. (Hey, I guess sugar and caffiene make a good mix.) That's to say, they had a lot of artsy iced teas, and I got kind of overwhelmed with all the flavors and ended up picking the first thing I saw with black tea in it. It ended up being a really good choice. It was some sort of chai tea drink, but of course they put a spin on it, and that spin was a bit of lemon (or something like that. I don't know. I don't get artsy tea very often.)

I didn't have anything to do there, so I grabbed a book off of their bookshelf (yeah, that's how artsy they are. They're a tea shop and they have a _bookshelf)_ and it ended up being a really interesting read about the history of watchmaking. Not my usual field of interest at all, but it was nice to read something new, you know?

Anyways, while I was reading, some teenagers recognized me and asked me for my autograph. I was totally zoned out, though, between the interesting book and the dissociation (I guess? I'm not really always aware that I'm dissociating unless it's obvious, honestly) it took them three times saying my name to get me to respond. They were starting to think I wasn't myself, and my brain had this weird moment of like, “what if you aren't Mark Watney after all?” Which is bogus as hell, because yes, I'm Mark Watney. I've only been Mark Watney my whole life.

Again. I think my name representing something fucks with my DPDR. It's hard sometimes to see my name on things and remember it's mine.

Anyways, I signed their stuff (mostly binders from some either summer school or school that's started way too early in August) and suddenly the other customers were looking at me weird. I guess they were pretending to treat me like a normal person. Or trying and failing. Either way, it was both amusing and kind of disappointing.

I ended up going home because I realized I'd been milking a cup of ice for 2 hours while reading about watch history. I made myself a ramen pack at… I wanna say five? I added some vegetables and an egg, and ended up eating almost all of it!

It's always good when you actually eat your dinner.

God, my life is boring.

After dinner, I worked on the speech I'm giving at the other university, which is actually Berkeley! I've heard good things about Berkeley. I mean, I also remember a bunch of anarchists trashed the campus about when I was applying for grad schools, so I ended up not applying there, but it's been 20 years or something, so I think they've probably cleared out by now.

Hey, though, while I was walking around town, I just realized I saw that the local nursery is hiring! I know it's definitely not the kind of job I pictured myself doing with this degree and career path, but I could use a job that isn't freelance obligatorily inspiring speechwriting and lecturing, and it sure as hell beats food service or academia. Maybe I'll check it out sometime tomorrow after PT.

Now that I think about it, I think being around plants would help me. I haven't started a garden since I moved to Oregon, because when I got back, I was kind of happy about not having to farm for subsistence. I think in my head, it was a little hard to separate growing things from growing them because of a duty, either a shift on Hermes or to keep myself alive back on Mars. But now that I've been back a while, I think it'll be easier to not think about Mars every time I water a plant or something.

I'm pretty tired, so I'm gonna end this on a happy note today. Yay, I might get to work with plants for once!

Botany is pretty fun when it's not saving your life.


End file.
